International Herald Tribune, France
Feb. 25, 2008
A $12 billion history lesson
By Timothy W. Ryback and Elazar Barkan Published: February 25, 2008
Last week, a senior French official flew to Istanbul to discuss
Turkey’s exclusion of Gaz de France from an $12 billion pipeline
project – designed to bring Central Asian oil directly to European
markets – because of recent French legislation making it a criminal
offense to deny that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
in 1915 constituted genocide.
The Turkish government clearly takes history seriously. Just last
October, when the United States Congress considered a bill similar to
the French genocide legislation – without the punitive dimension –
Turkey threatened to restrict airspace vital to the American military
efforts in Iraq. Washington backed off.
Turkey objects to the term "genocide" to describe the historical
tragedy it calls the "events of 1915." Ankara is resolute in
defending this stance and has mirror legislation to that of France
making it a criminal offense to use the term "genocide." Turkey does
not deny that hundreds of thousands of men, women and children
perished in a series of population transfers across a rugged mountain
region, but it blames the deaths on the tragic combination of
bureaucratic ineptness and particularly harsh climatic conditions.
For Armenians, as well as nearly two dozen other countries ranging
>From Australia to Venezuela, this was "genocide" plain and simple.
This clash of historical narratives has become more than academic, as
France and the United States have recently learned.
George Orwell warned us about mixing history and politics, but after
nearly a century, it is perhaps time for governments and scholars to
cooperate in resolving this dispute by establishing an international
historical commission to explore these issues in a sustained,
comprehensive and, most important, cooperative matter, as the Czechs
and Germans did with their joint historical commission in the 1990s
when similar tensions strained their relations.
Unlike the Nazi persecution of the Jews, which was determined to
have constituted genocide by an international tribunal in Nuremburg,
and subsequent tribunals that made similar determinations for Rwanda
and for Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia, the Armenian genocide,
or "events of 1915," has never been subjected to similar
international historical or legal scrutiny. There have been judgments
rendered on the tragedy, including expert opinions by the
International Center for Transitional Justice and the International
Association of Genocide Scholars. But there has never been a formal
independent historical commission that has had access to the complete
historical record or involved teams of scholars from Turkey and
Armenia, like the Czech-German historical commission established to
resolve historical disputes between those two countries or numerous
similar commissions.
There have been several attempts in recent years by Turks and
Armenians to address the issue collectively. In 2001, a
Turkish-Armenian reconciliation commission was launched to great
fanfare only to collapse a year later. In 2005, the late Hrant Dink
joined 30 Turkish and Armenian scholars and journalists at the
Salzburg Global Seminar to explore ways of advancing Turkish-Armenian
dialogue. Last April, a group of Nobel laureates led by Elie Wiesel
published an appeal for "understanding and reconciliation" that was
publicly greeted by Turkish scholars in an open letter.
In a gesture toward dialogue, the Turkish government published
full-page advertisements in major newspapers, including this one,
calling for a joint Turkish-Armenian historical commission. And just
this month, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
reiterated this position at an international security conference in
Munich.
Perhaps the time has come to take Turkey up on its offer and
establish an independent, international historical commission that
can explore the historical facts and legal definitions in a neutral
and sustained manner and render an independent and informed opinion.
Such a commission would need to have the historical authority and
legal expertise to review the historical facts and deliberate on the
legal implications. It would need the cooperation of Turkey and
Armenia as well as Russia, France, Britain, the United States and
other countries to provide access to pertinent archives. And it would
benefit from access to private archives that contain relevant
documents.
History is best when it is researched and debated before it is
lobbied and legislated. It will be a costly undertaking, both in
terms of time and resources – there is no question about that – but
as France and the United States know, unresolved historic legacies
often come with an even higher price tag.
Elazar Barkan and Timothy W. Ryback co-direct the Institute for
Historical Justice and Reconciliation.